Without Dash

I spent the last couple of days re-doing the design of this blog and fiddling with details; trying to get everything ‘just right’. It inspired me to write the following post:

My days are filled with ‘should’ thoughts and with New Year coming closer, more and more should thoughts pop up in my head. It is the time of New Year’s resolutions and there are so many things that I should do and change in 2009. I should finally quit smoking. I should start to exercise more. I should create more routines in my life. I should clean my house better. I should be a better mum, I should be a better wife, but most of all I should stop being the perfectionist that I am.

Do you feel burdened by your should thoughts? Each time that you have a should thought, you add a small weight to your shoulders. Imagine how much weight you are carrying around day in day out. So, what is wrong with these should thoughts? Aren’t they supposed to make us a better person?

Perfectionism is an irrational belief that everything must be perfect, to be the best, to reach an ideal and to never make a mistake. It keeps you alert to weaknesses in yourself, but also in others. And perfectionism is a belief that nothing is ever good enough to meet expectations.

Perfectionism can exist on three levels.

First, you can be a self-blaming perfectionist who sets up very high expectations for herself. People like this focus immensely on mistakes they make, rather than things that are done well.

Secondly, you can be a task master perfectionist, who applies her own high standards to others. People like this expect everyone around them to do everything according to their own standards.

And last, some perfectionists are total pleasers and adopt perfectionist behavior in order to be accepted by others and fear to be found not good enough.

One person might have one or all characteristics of these types. To use myself as an example: Before I even can sit down and work on my blog, I have to have my house spotless. It usually takes longer than a day, which does not leave me any time to blog at all. Then when my daughter is back from school and spills some drink and crumbles a cookie and drops her dirty clothes on the floor, I get all frustrated over the fact that she ruined my hard work, that she is not neat like me and that I have to spend another day cleaning again tomorrow. At the end of the day I fear what people will say that after being home all day long: a) I did not accomplish any work on my blog and b) the house is not even clean after all.

Sometimes it is really rewarding to do things extremely well. And every now and then there is day that things go well and people do notice all that I have accomplished at my own high standard.

However, most of the days, perfectionism actually stops me from achieving anything at all. Simple jobs become large time-consuming projects. And this often does not leave much time for other things ( I once actually scrubbed my floor with a nail brush and after six hours I was only halfway and had to give up for lack of time).

And because small tasks end up being huge, very often I do not even get started. (I wanted to have my own set of websites and blogs for several years now, but got stuck with the design for over three years. It just wasn’t good enough.) More and more, I am feeling that I have to push myself to do things. I am beginning to feel that I just don’t care about these things anymore.

Most disturbing of all is not how it is influencing my own life and being (procrastination, compulsive behavior, pessimism, guilt, and so on), but how it affects relationships with other people. It is quite difficult to live with me, but working with me is almost impossible. My standards are unrealistically high and people feel judged and unappreciated by me. Many perfectionists do not realize this, and as a result they see people more and more as obstacles, who stop them from creating this perfect world. Instead of spending time going out with friends, or playing with my daughter, I am too busy alphabetizing the contents of my refrigerator.

Do you recognize anything in this story? Do you have too many should thoughts? Are you counterproductive because you waste your time fretting over details? Join me in overcoming perfectionist habits and become a better person.

• Make a realistic schedule with your daily tasks. Do not spend more time on one task as is assigned for it.
• Describe for each task what would be a perfect way of doing it and what would be totally inadequate. Aim for the middle way; good enough.
• Make a list of tasks that are not critical for anyone’s well being (like cutting the grass, cleaning the windows, etc) and do these tasks without spending too much time and energy.
• Remember there is no perfect. What is perfect? To who? Perfection is an illusory goal for humans.
• Remember that it is acceptable to be human. And humans make mistakes, fail, are imperfect and weak. People around you are also human.
• Let go of what you ‘should do’ and how you ‘should be’. Accept who you are.
• Be proud when you have achieved something, rather than trying to find mistakes in the accomplished work. Enjoy success.

Tags: Self Image, self improvement